Christmas midnight communion: when the extraordinary embraces the ordinary

He says
it is ‘startlingly .. like a London suburb’. And continues, “But as I saw it on
Christmas Eve last year it was Russian enough, the great courtyard was full
of troikas and sledges, and the clear air musical with
tinkling bells as the people came driving in from far and near, clad in warm
furs, for the service.”

Well I do
see a bit of snow, but I don’t see many troikas outside. But however you came
it is lovely to see you

Christmas
eve is a magical night. We have gravity defying reindeer and legends of animals
that speak at midnight.

But
there is something very special about tonight. Because on this holy night, we
believe that the extraordinary meets the ordinary, and the ordinary touches the
extraordinary.

THE EXTRAORDINARY MEETS THE ORDINARY

It is
about the extraordinary: prophecies that go back over 2000 years being
fulfilled, appearances of angels, remarkable dreams, a virgin birth, an
unexpected star, visitors from a foreign land

And it
is also about the very ordinary: It is about innkeepers and shepherds. You can’t
get more ordinary than that.

If I am
honest, the innkeeper is not mentioned in the story, but his inn is – but the
innkeeper or two have a role in most school nativity plays. I like the story of
the little boy who wanted to play Joseph, but got relegated to the part of
first inn keeper. His only line was ‘no room, no room’. He thought this wasn’t
good enough and wanted to make his role much bigger. So when the big day of the
performance came, and all the mums and dads were there, and Joseph knocked on the
innkeeper’s door and asked if there was a place where Mary and he could stay,
the boy replied, ‘Yes of course, please come in’.

And
shepherds come and visit. They are the most ordinary of the ordinary.

People
told jokes about shepherds. Jesus told a joke about a shepherd. He had 100
sheep and he lost one. So he abandoned the 99 in order to go after the one lost
sheep. And while people were still laughing at the stupid shepherd, Jesus
turned it around and said, ‘God is like that’. Each person is so precious to
God that he would leave 99 others in order to find you.

But it
is about the very ordinary. There was
nothing special about Joseph and Mary, a carpenter and his wife, a young couple
alone, unnoticed in a town that was full of people. And at the centre of this
story is a young woman giving birth to a baby. Now I know that to the couple
that is far from ordinary, but on a grand scale – 15000 babies are born every hour.

But on
the first Christmas night, the extraordinary met the ordinary. Angels greet
shepherds. A star appears to astrologers. And the eternal Son of God, the one
who was there before there were any beginnings, the creator of all things, strips
off his divine status, strips off his eternal privilege and power and, in the
words of St Paul, empties himself and becomes a human. He becomes a baby, born
to a peasant couple.

St
Augustine wrote:

Maker of the sun,

He is made under the sun.

In the Father he remains,

From his mother he goes forth.

Creator of heaven and earth,

He was born on earth under heaven.

Unspeakably wise,

He is wisely speechless.

Filling the world,

He lies in a manger.

Ruler of the stars,

He nurses at his mother's bosom.

He is both great in the nature of God,

and small in the form of a servant.

This
holy night, the extraordinary meets the ordinary.

The eternal
Son of God allows himself to be embraced in the arms of a peasant girl.

And this holy night is also about

THE ORDINARY REACHING OUT FOR THE
EXTRAORDINARY.

That is
why we are here.

We’ve
come to worship. We’ve come to hear again the message, to declare the praises of
God.

We, limited by space and time, have come to reach
out for the unlimited

We, mortal men and women, have come to reach
out for the eternal

We have
come to reach out to the one who – in choosing to be born as a human being –
bestowed eternal value on each human being. God became like you.

We have
come to reach out to the one who was born as a human being because he loves
you.

Now
please do not get this wrong.

When I
say he loves you, I do not mean that he loves you like an indulgent grandfather
who lets you do whatever you want. That actually is not love.

Real
love looks at us and sees us. He sees the muck in us, the sin, the greed, the
perverted twisted desires that control us, the bitterness and unforgiveness,
the lies and deceit, rebellion and disobedience, the self-centredness that
thinks that life and everybody and everything should rotate around us – and he
hates it.

He hates
it because it is a denial of everything that he is, because he is holy and he
cannot look on that sort of stuff.

He hates
it because it destroys other people. It denies their eternal significance and
it turns them into tools who are there to satisfy us.

And it
is destroying us, shrinking us, shriveling us up, making us into nothing.

And real
love looks at what we were made to be, and it will pay any price so that we might become what were created to become.

So in
his love, he reaches out to us, he comes to live as one of us, to live a
perfect life. And he comes to die on the cross so that we can be forgiven;

and now
he offers to change us – so that we become beautiful on the inside (and in
eternity radiant on the outside) - and so that we do not need to shrivel up and
become nothing – but we can flourish and grow and become like Jesus, become
like God.

And we
have come to reach out to the one who is Emmanuel. When God tells Joseph that
Mary is going to have a baby, he calls him Emmanuel. It means God with us.

Yes of
course God was with Mary and Joseph in an oh so real way. And God walked and
talked and laughed and ate with the 12 disciples and many others 2000 years ago.
But Jesus has said that even though now we cannot see him, he is no less
Emmanuel. He is beside you. He is closer even than your breathing. He is with
us.

So when
we worship, when we praise God in the carols, when we bow down and confess our
sins – and say that he is right and we are wrong, when we hear and believe his
word, we are reaching out to touch the face of the one who is with us.

This
holy night, we the ordinary are reaching out to touch the extraordinary

THIS IS THE NIGHT WHEN THE EXTRAORDINARY
EMBRACES THE ORDINARY SO THAT WE ORDINARY CAN BECOME EXTRAORDINARY

This is
the night when frogs and beasts can become glorious princes

This is
the night when scullery maids can become radiant princesses

I know that this is the language of poetry. But it is very real.

When the
early church fathers preached, they used a simple phrase: The eternal Son of
God was born as a human baby, so that human beings might become sons and
daughters of God.

Or, as
John writes, even more simply, ‘to all who received him, who believed in his
name, he gave power to become children of God’.

You can become
a child of God. You can know God as your heavenly Father. You can have intimacy
with him for eternity. And you can be changed so that you can begin to become
like him. You can begin to know his desires and share his desires – so that the
prayer ‘your kingdom come’, ‘даприйдетцарстветвое’
really becomes your deepest desire.

You can
begin to see people and things and situations as he sees them. You can be filled
with his love, with his mercy, with his generousity, with his goodness. You can
also begin to glimpse evidence of his power beginning to work in you and
through you.

And it
is all possible because of this holy night, when the extraordinary became
ordinary and lived among us.

We’ve
sung a prayer this evening:

O holy Child of Bethlehem

Descend to us, we pray

Cast out our sin and enter in

Be
born in us today

That is what
we need to do.

As we tonight
reach out to touch the extraordinary who became ordinary, so now, if we wish,
we need to ask him come into us – just like the bread and wine that we will eat
and drink in a few minutes. We need to invite him to live in us, as our Saviour
– the one who rescues us; as our Lord – the one who we obey; and as our friend.
Because then, this holy night, we the ordinary can begin to become extraordinary.

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